1. poet, lover, and fighter for equality 1904-1973 Chile
Pablo Neruda
poet, lover, and fighter for equality
Chile

2. Chile

3. Childhood cold forest, of the far south rain, Native Americans
copihue flower
father a stern railroad man
mother died; kind stepmother
wrote first poem when six

4. Never finished college--hung out on streets of Santiago

5. Lots of girlfriends, three wives

6. Early poems were about love
“To hear the immense night, more immense without her
And the verse falls onto my soul like dew onto grass.”
“I like it when you’re quiet. It’s as if you weren’t here now
And you heard me from a distance….”

7. Diplomatic postings Burma, Java, Ceylon, Singapore
Often lonely, didn’t speak language
Love troubles—pursued by Josie Bliss
Married a Dutch girl—short marriage
Wrote “Walking Around.”

8. Spanish Civil War, 1930s

9. Wrote poem soldiers carried into battle
You will ask why his poetry
doesn’t speak to us of dreams, of the leaves
of the great volcanoes of his native land.
Come and see the blood in the street
Come and see
the blood in the streets
come and see the blood
in the streets!

10. Part Native-American

11. Became a Communist in 1945. Had to flee the country through the Andes Mts.

12. Returned, married Matilda, happy period of Odes (poems of praise).

13. Won the Nobel Prize for Literature, 1971
“I return to the
streets of my
childhood, to the
winters of South
America….to a dark
continent seeking
for the light.”

14. Later years sadder Became Senator
Friend, Salvador Allende, elected president.
Allende assassinated.
September 11, 1973

15. Neruda Died September 23, 1973. Some say of a broken heart.
Some say prostate cancer.
Some say poison.

16. Funeral outlawed, but thousands went anyway.

17. October Fullness Little by little, and also in great leaps
life happened to me.
Oerhaps it was my punishment,
Perhaps I was condemned to be happy.
Let it be known that nobody
crossed my path without sharing my being.
I plunged up to the neck
into adversities that were not mine,
Into all the suffering of others.. . .